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Saturday, 6 May 2017

(The Star) Khairy: Plans for government projects should be made public

Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has suggested plans for city design and government projects be made available to the public.

In line with the 2050 National Transformation (TN50) initiative to adopt more modern practices in governance, he said there needed to be open data for plans to support a sharing economy of crowd-sourced solutions, to enable other professionals to suggest solutions to the government.

Speaking at a Sembang TN50 session at Dewan Tan Sri Mahfoz Khalid in the Public Works Department (JKR) headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Khairy and Works Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof fielded questions by young professionals from the construction and architecture industry.

Replying to a question by a JKR officer from Negri Sembilan that public transport options like the KL-KLIA ERL Speed Train were not inclusive, Khairy said no one should be left behind.

“Mega projects need to be profitable while still benefiting their communities,” he said.

During the question-and- answer session, Fadillah said although it would be good if the government set aside reserve land for future projects, it would be too expensive to do so.

“A lot of land already belongs to private owners, so it would be prohibitively expensive to buy up land and keep it until a project comes up,” he said.

Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM) deputy president Sarly Adre Sarkum, who attended the talk, said open data would help architects plan their projects better to accommodate others.

“When three different people are building in the same area, without talking to each other, that’s where you get problems like massive congestion,” he said.